The problem with calling metrics like word count, time to first byte “ranking factors”

Why Jenny believes CTR is NOT a significant ranking factor

How to stay focused on what matters in the noisy SEO industry

How to think through and solve your own SEO problems

Pros and (mostly) cons of AMP

A tip for improving product pages, and how to get buy-in

Managing scope creep as an SEO consultant

Have you ever wondered if all of these SEO Ranking Factor studies are actually useful? Do they help us as SEOs in the work we do? And further, are they damaging the reputation of our industry? An industry which has had a hard enough time earning respect!

Like myself, maybe you’ve read them – but their conclusions often contradict (some say user metrics are a factor, some don’t etc), they confuse causation with correlation – so it’s frustrating to know if we should pay attention to them… and it’s even more frustrating to think that these studies might be giving SEO a bad name!

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Cobus

Dan Shure

A lot! Too much to list in a comment – and it depends on the knowledge level of the people/person I am educating. For instance one client I’ll start all the way back at “this is what search console is”, but others I’ll be teaching them advanced things in SEMrush or something like multi-channel attribution – there’s no stock thing I teach!